We are probably in the middle of another surge in life expectancy. Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and dramatic advances in medicine, many people may well live to a hundred and beyond. Good news, bad news? That is first of all a personal question, which everyone can only answer for themselves. In most cases, though, a longer life will likely be welcomed and in demand on the healthcare market. For those who decide otherwise, the corresponding market offerings already exist too.
For society, the drawbacks prevail for now, because public awareness lags behind reality. People still believe that a few decades of productive work can finance considerably more decades of retirement and consumption. Yet young people spend ever longer in education, and they start working later, often only part-time.
Anyone who tries to change the retirement age through legislation ends up politically sidelined and gets punished at the ballot box. France, once a proud nation, risks being brought down by exactly this problem, but we Swiss are also struggling with it, piling up billions in implicit debt in our pension system year after year. Implicit means off the books, invisible to the general public, because it is politically inconvenient.
A precarious generational contract
The generational contract, precarious for some time now, is close to tipping over for good. Too many older recipients, too few active contributors. It is a pincer movement: on one side, rising life expectancy; on the other, far too low fertility. On average, fewer than 1.3 children per couple is not enough, and it is making Switzerland shrink. And immigration, if one even wanted it, is likely to become a thing of the past soon, because there will also be fewer and fewer young Portuguese, Spaniards, Poles and Germans. They, too, are barely reproducing.
That would leave Africa as a labour pool, with its still intact birth rates. More likely, however, we will have to prepare ourselves, like it or not, for a process of shrinking. But we are not helpless in the face of it. There are three solutions.
First: another significant increase in labour productivity, so that the loss of workers can be offset. Using AI and robots to replace human labour. We have long since got used to robot vacuum cleaners and robot lawnmowers, and self-driving cars are already a matter of course in other parts of the world. The potential in areas of far more economically significant value creation is enormous.
Second: despite all political resistance, the most far-reaching possible deregulation of the retirement age, and with it a formal invitation to everyone still fit and healthy to keep working, producing, earning and contributing, instead of touring the country year in, year out, equipped with little backpacks and baseball caps, on heavily subsidised public transport.
“There should no longer be a fixed limit on when work has to stop.”
Working beyond 65
75 must become the new 65, or better still: there should be no limit at all, set by any authority, on when work must end and retirement must begin. Are older people taking jobs away from the young? Nonsense. Many young people only work part-time anyway, and there will be fewer of them regardless. Those who work in old age contribute to gross domestic product and have more money to spend. An active cohort of over-65s will bring the country welcome growth.
It doesn’t have to mean continuing one’s previous job, nor a 42-hour week. But a solid vocational training and manual skills are not lost so quickly. And there will certainly be no shortage of jobs in much sought-after services. Those who keep working past 65 relieve the pension system and, as they age, also reduce the longevity risks borne by the AHV (state pension) or the pension funds. Not least, the implicit debt can be quietly reduced this way.
Third: freeing up a larger share of public employees through the consistent use of artificial intelligence in the public sector. Government action is deterministic, meaning it follows a recipe book, and is therefore practically made for the use of artificial intelligence. Much of what the state does could be largely automated. We must take advantage of this if we are at risk of running out of people.
Comfortably settled in the state
Far too many Swiss have made themselves comfortable in the public sector in recent years. They often work only 60 or 80%, enjoy generous sabbaticals and justify their usefulness through sheer busyness. Meanwhile, the dirty work in this country is done by foreigners and second-generation immigrants (“Secondos”). On closer inspection, something like a silent apartheid has emerged in our country.
So when it comes to finding new productive forces, the place to look is clearly the public sector, which has grown above average in recent years, is overpaid and has long been oversized. A quiet objection: whether they would actually be able to work? Well…
All in all: let us not become depressed in the face of the foreseeable shrinking process! There are labour reserves in our society, and our capacity for innovation will make up for the rest. It may well be that keeping grandmothers and grandfathers in work, and bringing comfortable public employees back into productive activity, will give our weary society new dynamism and a new zest for life.
This article was first published on October 14, 2026 in Finanz und Wirtschaft and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the editors.
